


just waiting to hit the ground

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e08 The Things We Bury, F/M, one shot with additions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:51:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After SHIELD loses track of Grant, Jemma's sent to smooth things over with Senator Ward.</p><p>It goes badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. just waiting to hit the ground

With most of their resources already allocated to dealing with the problem at hand, Jemma - and the three agents assigned to her - are forced to take a commercial flight. Her fear of heights has returned with a vengeance in recent months, and she is without her tried and true means of getting it under control, so she’s forced to spend the three hour flight reciting various universal laws and scientific tables just to get through.

The car ride to their destination is at least half as long as the flight and she spends it thinking up all the places she’d like to be going less than here.

HYDRA of course, tops the list. Or bottoms it out, depending. Specifically, the place where they do the brainwashing.

Next comes standing on the ramp of the Bus, looking down at the Atlantic ocean.

The _bottom_ of the Atlantic Ocean.

New York the day the Chitauri invaded.

Eddie Harding’s apartment. (He was really a terrible boyfriend.)

The last leg of the journey may come with picturesque views of New England forests and mountains, but with her topic of choice, it does nothing for Jemma’s mood. She leaps from the car the moment her agents give the okay.

“Fernandez, Wills,” she says, “check the perimeter. Unless we beat the senator here, there should be guards posted.” They know all this, of course, but nod anyway. They may be her guards for this mission, but she’s their superior. “Adams?” she says to the final agent. “Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

There isn’t. Which is both a blessing and a curse. It allows Jemma to choose the location of the first meeting. The plush sitting room just off the foyer is homier than a meeting on the front steps (Adams’ lockpicking will just have to be forgiven), but not so deep into the house that it seems overly invasive. Unfortunately, finding no one home also prolongs this entire ordeal; she must sit on every piece of furniture in the room at least twice, trying to find a comfortable spot.

Adams, kindly, doesn’t comment on her fidgeting. Though eventually he does ask, “Do you want something to drink?”

She should probably reprimand him for drinking on the job, but doesn’t. It’s been a hell of a year and today of all days, she’d love to do the same. “You brought a flask?”

“No.” He motions to the well-stocked drink cart under the window. The “cabin” (more a small mansion in the woods), has obviously been prepared for the senator’s arrival. There are fresh flowers in all the vases and the smell of recently washed linens hangs in the air.

“I don’t think stealing from the man will make a good impression.”

Adams scoffs. “It’s not stealing. Technically everything in this place is partially-” He cuts off, his hand going to his holster.

“The door is open,” a surprised voice says from the foyer. Jemma stands, gesturing for Adams to relax. She recognizes the voice from numerous videos, not the least of which being the speech this man gave less than a week ago on the danger SHIELD’s continued existence posed.

She braces herself, pastes on what she hopes is a pleasant expression, and steps forward. “Senator,” she says warmly when he appears in the doorway. “I know this must be a shock for you, but let me assure you, we’re not-”

Her voice dies abruptly as a second man appears behind the senator. Adams is already reacting behind her, but he’s too late. She can actually feel the wind created as the bullet flies past, and thinks the sound of Adams’ body hitting the floor will feature in her nightmares tonight. Assuming there will be room for it, given how the rest of this day is shaping up to go.

“Grant,” she breathes.

He steps past his brother, eyes going to the corners of the room but landing quickly back on her. “This is a surprise,” he says with a cocky grin. He puts one hand to her back as he passes her by, the same way he has a thousand times before, and she feels a kiss press to her hair. She never thought she’d experience the familiar show of concern again, never thought she _wanted_ to until she finds herself reflexively leaning into his touch.

“You know this woman?” Christian Ward asks.

“She’s with SHIELD,” Grant says. He’s checking out the window. “She’s also my wife. Christian, Jemma. Jemma, Christian. How many’d you bring with you?”

That last is directed at her. “One,” she says.

She refuses to face him, but she can still feel Grant’s _it’s so cute when you try to lie_ smile.

“So who were the two I killed outside? Coulson not trust you anymore?”

Jemma sits heavily on the nearest armchair.

“I think that means they were SHIELD too,” Christian says. He heads straight for the drink cart, stepping over Adams’ body, which Grant is picking over for weapons.

Jemma’s beginning to think Garrett didn’t have everything to do with making Grant who he is.

“You’re married?” Christian asks, sounding only mildly interested.

“Three years,” Grant says. He takes Adams’ ICER, pistol, and knife - all recovered from a drop box after their flight - and pockets them all. “Four in April.”

“Congratulations.” Christian takes a seat across from her, perfectly at ease with the dead body in the room. He looks worse for wear, dirt and dust covering his nice suit, dried blood sticking to his head and running down into his shirt, making it cling. Whatever he and Grant have been doing, it’s nothing good. Christian takes a small sip of his drink before pressing the glass to his temple.

Instead of following his brother's lead and sitting, Grant crosses straight back to Jemma, pulling her up by the hand and dragging her to him. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he says, and she has only the barest second to realize he means for waiting at all, before he’s kissing her.

It’s been months since she kissed him goodbye at the Hub, months since the little roadside motel she met him at days later. She left the team, left Fitz, to meet him there. In his arms, in a room that smelled like cheap beer and cigarettes, she was sure they could weather any storm together.

That was before she got Fitz’s call, before Grant dragged her onto the stolen Bus, before she knew her husband was one of the very people she was running from.

But for a moment, none of that matters, and it’s like she’s right back in that motel room.

His arms are tight around her, his kisses more forceful than she’s used to. She wonders if it’s the months of separation or if this is the way he’s always wanted to kiss her. She wonders if she imagines the punishing edge to his attentions. She doesn’t think she cares. She clings to him, returning every ounce of desperation he pours into her. It’s been months since she was last held by her husband, and she’s only human.

He’s the one to finally break the kiss and allow reality to come crashing back in. She’s just kissed a murderer, a traitor. She enjoyed it.

“Yeah, very nice,” Christian says. “But what is SHIELD doing here?”

Ward’s face, still only inches from hers, darkens and a chill runs through Jemma. _This_ is the man who terrorized her friends and kidnapped her in the days after HYDRA’s revelation. This is the man she’s been trying to superimpose over her loving husband for the past six months. She's sorry to say she hasn't entirely succeeded.

His eyes focus on her, his expression changing to one of annoyance at the way she tenses in his arms. He allows her to step out of them though, which is a relief. Her thigh hits the edge of her chair and she once again sits down heavily.

“Yeah, Jemma,” Grant says, calmly taking a seat on the couch nearest her. “Why did Coulson send you?” He puts just enough emphasis on the final word that it’s not quite the question Christian asked.

She forces her eyes away from him. It’s nearly impossible, and no matter how hard she tries she can’t help but be aware of what Grant’s doing at any moment. The way his arms reach along the back of the couch, almost from one end to the other. The way his eyes move frequently to the door. They way he smiles when she speaks.

“Director Coulson wanted you to know we were doing everything possible to find Grant,” Jemma says. Grant chuckles and lifts his hands slightly as if to say _found me_. There were also meant to be reassurances that SHIELD wouldn’t allow Grant to harm his brother, but obviously that hasn’t worked out.

“And he thought sending you to do this would be a good idea?” Grant asks.

“I don’t see why not,” Christian says, “she seems to be a lovely woman. Despite her taste in men.” He takes a long swallow of his drink, his eyes drifting shut in pleasure.

“He was undercover,” Jemma says, feeling the need to defend herself, “for our entire relationship.”

Christian’s eyes snap open and he looks very near to laughing out his expensive Scotch. Grant does not appear similarly amused.

“We were real,” he says. He’s said it before. On the Bus as they flew to Cuba. The one and only time she visited him prior to his relocation into SHIELD custody. Once, when she arrived in Vault D to save him from himself and found him still conscious. It seemed impossible, with all the blood he’d already lost, but he managed to tangle his sticky, dripping fingers in her hair and say it. When she finally got the blood washed out, she marched straight to Coulson’s office and told him she’d take the HYDRA mission.

“Jemma,” Grant presses, tilting his head to catch her eyes. “You know that, right?” It's the most like the Grant she knew - _thought_ she knew - that he's looked in months. The expression is so sincere, so heartfelt. 

She flatly refused to speak to him while he was in Vault D. She would love to say it was for the honorable reasons. Grief, sense of betrayal, heartbreak. But truthfully, she refused for her own self-preservation. Her husband of _three years_ was a traitor. She was lucky that Coulson was so short-staffed that he had to keep her on instead of tossing her out or, worse, locking her up. She was too afraid to see Grant for fear he’d say something implicating her in his crimes. Or that she would. But no one’s here now to hear what she has to say, no one save Christian, who seems more amused by the drama unfolding before him than anything.

“I was undercover in HYDRA,” she says, throwing the statement down like a gauntlet. She isn’t disappointed. Grant’s sincere expression freezes and that muscle in his jaw ticks the way it does when he’s trying to suppress the remains of the berserker rage. “They were very pleased to have me. Half of the famous FitzSimmons-” The muscle ticks again. Grant’s always hated that name. “-and your wife, besides. You know what one of the first things the interviewer said to me when I applied was? That she was sorry it took you dying for you to _finally_ turn me. My file was already thick with four years’ worth of reports - reports made by _you_ \- about how the attempts were going. So do tell me again, Grant, how our relationship wasn’t a _mission_.”

Grant draws in slow, purposeful breaths. His fingers tap out an uneven rhythm. Christian’s wide eyes move back and forth between the two of them like he’s at a tennis match. Or, more accurately, at an old west shootout at high noon, waiting to see who will kill who first.

Grant’s expression eases into something approaching pleasant. He nods to her hand. “You’re wearing your ring.”

Her hand fists on the arm of the chair. She immediately regrets it.

“You weren’t, when Coulson marched me out of the base,” he goes on calmly. “But you had been. Recently.”

“For HYDRA,” she says. “I was playing the part of the grieving widow rather convincingly, I think.”

“Good,” he says immediately. “Remind anyone who might be looking that you’re mine.”

“I told them you were dead,” she spits. “And I am not _yours_. Not in any sense of the word.”

He looks like he might want to argue that point, but Christian cuts in. “As fun as it is watching someone else’s marriage fall apart, I’d really like to know what the plan here is, Grant. You had to have been thinking past the trip down memory lane.”

It’s easier this time for Grant to push aside his rage. She wonders if it’s just the back-to-back resurgences or if it has something to do with the sharp edge to his smile.

“I do,” he says, “but none of those accounted for my _wife_ showing up.” Despite his words, he doesn’t seem perturbed by her bursting in on his plans. He stands and holds his hand out for her to take.

She crosses her arms over her chest and stands herself.

“Why don’t you go upstairs?” he asks. “Get some sleep. Coulson made you fly out here, didn’t he?” He rubs her shoulders gently as he ushers her towards the door. The familiar gesture, coupled with the stress of not only his presence but the flight (it’s been six months, how can he still read her so well?) have her fighting exhaustion before she makes the foyer.

“Second room on the right. It has its own bathroom, so you don’t have to go looking.” There’s something about his phrasing there that catches in the back of her mind. “Jemma.” His serious tone has her turning at the foot of the stairs.

He catches her chin between his fingers, keeping her focus on him. Not that it would be anywhere else at the moment. He steps into her space, his free hand sliding over her hip to pull her to him. She should be fighting him tooth and nail, trying to escape. Part of her reasons that fighting back, when he has her overpowered and outnumbered, will only impede her later, when she might have real chances to get away. But none of that logic explains why her mouth falls open slightly in anticipation of a kiss.

His breath is warm against her lips, but he never closes that final distance. Instead he lifts his hand away from her hip, allowing her to see her own phone out of the corner of her eye. Her heart drops.

“Don’t make me chase you,” he warns, and returns to discuss whatever comes next with Christian.

She spends several long seconds staring at the front door, knowing she can’t actually make an escape that way, before Grant clears his throat, spurring her up the stairs.

Naturally, she doesn’t go straight for the room he ordered her to. The first door on the left is a linen closet, with only a few back-ups of basic necessities. Nothing she can use. The first door on the right reveals a narrow flight of stairs, presumably to the attic. Jemma files that knowledge away and moves on.

Just stepping into the room Grant ordered brings back her exhaustion. The big, cushy bed. The warm cherry wood. The hazy light peeking through the curtains. It’s impossible not to feel sleepy.

She pushes it down to search for supplies. There is, unfortunately, not much. Being a vacation home, the place doesn’t see the day-to-day living that would account for a stray letter opener or pair of scissors. Even so, she’s barely made it halfway through the room before she hears at rattle at the door.

Her heart stutters in her chest. Not, she’s surprised to realize, at the thought of Grant out there. She’s thinking of his brother. This is the house where Christian terrorized Grant, forcing him to watch as their younger brother died. What if Christian decides to revisit that exercise, scar Grant anew as an adult?

But the rattle subsides and no one comes in. Hesitantly, Jemma approaches the door, intending to swing it open wide to surprise whoever’s out there. Only the knob won’t fully turn and the door won’t move when she tries to force it. It’s been blocked from the outside.

“Grant!” she yells. She tries again, beating on the door. There’s no response. She curses him with every foul word she knows, stopping only when she realizes her extensive knowledge of foreign curses comes from his penchant for mixing his languages during sex. Only her husband could ruin cursing for her on top of everything else.

With nothing else to do, she resumes her search for a weapon or a tool. The room itself turns up nothing readily available. There are a few framed pictures (Grant is noticeably absent from all of them) that, if broken, might be useful. The glass and sharp edges of the frames could come in handy, but the noise would definitely be noticed. In the bathroom, she’s elated to discover a nail file stuck in the bottom of a drawer. She slips it into her shoe, hopeful it will be of use later.

A quick check of the door reveals it’s still securely shut. She makes it halfway to the bed, intending to sit while she tries to figure out her next move, before realizing that will result in her falling fast asleep. She paces instead.

She has very few options available to her. SHIELD will think to check in once no one from her team does, but that could take hours. They’re rather far removed out here, and between the fruitless hunt for Grant, and Bakshi’s interrogation, the others are well occupied. She’s on her own.

She pauses, her eyes drawn to the window. It’s a terrible idea and her stomach drops just at the thought of it, but it’s her best option short of waiting for Grant (or Christian) to return, and attempting what will surely be a fruitless attack.

The window opens easily, though a hasty look down has her sitting on the floor for a good ten minutes, almost wishing Grant would come back and yell at her for even considering something so stupid.

A second look reveals that there’s a ledge wide enough for her to balance on and - thank heaven - another window only a few feet away. It’s not even that far. One small jump, a large step really, and-

She sits back on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. She wants Grant.

This is what she hates him for the most. Not the murders or the lies, but the necessary result of them: that she’s been denied his presence. He promised her forever and he stole himself away from her, sacrificed himself upon Garrett’s altar and left her with a broken heart and a wedding ring she can't make herself remove.

After the Chitauri virus, he soothed away her fear of heights every time it made a reappearance. But ever since his true loyalties were revealed, she’s been left alone. She endures - because she has to - but finding the strength within herself is a small consolation when her bed is cold and there are no arms to hold her while she cries.

She waits it out. There’s nothing else to do unless she wants to follow Grant‘s orders and go to sleep.

When she’s sure enough of herself, she grabs one of the picture frames and rips up one of the pillowcases to hang it from her neck. She’ll need a blunt object to break the window if it won’t open and something to protect her hand from falling glass.

That done, she climbs out the window without another look. The last was enough. She thinks about the width of the ledge, the height of the window, the placement of the bricks, the distance to the next ledge. She doesn’t think about the emptiness beneath.

Once on the other side, she clings to the window and drags in deep, shaking breaths. They’re not sobs, not quite. It’s a victory.

The good news ends there, however, when she discovers that the window is, indeed, locked. It takes several heart-stopping minutes to get the pillowcase wrapped comfortably around her arm and no less than three tries to get up the degree of force necessary to break the glass. When it does shatter, she nearly loses her balance and cuts her palm clutching at the top of the window frame. She grits her teeth resolutely and kicks out the rest of the glass so she can duck inside.

She falls through thick curtains, landing on her hands and knees on the soft carpet. The curtains, luckily, caught the glass and she’s spared further injury. It wouldn’t matter either way because she is _not moving_ , at least not for several seconds. The solid ground beneath her is too much of a relief.

Muscles held taut for the last few heart-stopping minutes relax and she wills her breathing to even out. That focus on her breath is how she realizes there’s something wrong. A smell in the air that shouldn’t be. She can’t quite place it, but knows she’s encountered it before.

It makes her gut clench and her skin go cold. It makes her want to go back out the window.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she lifts herself to her hands and then her knees. The room is dark with the curtains closed, but she’s been in it long enough to make out shapes. A dresser. A desk. The wide, king bed. And the two unmoving shapes atop it.

She knows what that smell is.

All feeling leeches out of Jemma. When the door opens, she doesn’t cringe in horror at the sight of Grant. She barely even registers the blood on his hands. She’s far more focused on Adams’ ICER, and the relief that whatever he has planned next, she's going to be sleeping through it.


	2. after

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shineyma requested I write what comes after the original fic.
> 
> Also for wswinter's "choose" theme (for which this is kind of half a fill and half an anti-fill. Whoops).

“My sympathies, Mrs. Ward,” Whitehall says, sounding not at all moved by the story Grant’s spun. “Though I do wish you’d told us. We might have been able to help.”

She can’t look at Whitehall, not because he’s a snake or because he’s completely wrong in his estimation of her, but because he’s sitting with his back to a very impressive cityscape and her heart is not yet recovered from climbing out a second story window this afternoon. The other man in the room, Skye’s father as it turns out, is plainly insane and encouraging him by meeting his eyes will surely cause her trouble later. That leaves her with only Grant to look at. He smiles down at her encouragingly, seeming for all the world to be madly in love with her.

Madly being the operative word.

“I couldn’t risk Grant’s safety,” she hears herself say.

Grant lifts her bandaged hand to his lips. His fingers clutch it loosely and his kiss is so gentle she barely feels it through the padding. He never once breaks eye contact.

He stitched it himself. She was still sleeping off the ICER while he did but she checked it almost the moment she woke up and recognizes his stitches. He smiled like it was cute that she had to double-check his work - and then he told her the plan.

It’s simple enough. Use the truth of his imprisonment by SHIELD to explain away her betrayal so that they can return to HYDRA together. That she had no desire to ever set foot inside HYDRA again didn’t seem to matter to him. It is, as he said, the only place they can be together, and he is determined to make that happen.

“I suppose now we know where your true loyalties lie,” Whitehall drawls.

Grant turns to face him and Jemma foolishly follows his gaze. The city lights like a star field are somehow worse than it would be in daytime and she presses her face into his shoulder to hide from it. His arm, laid along the back of the couch, curls around her to rub comfortingly along her ribs.

“And _my_ loyalties are with HYDRA,” he says smoothly, “so I don’t see what the problem is.”

He smells the same. She’s used to surface changes depending on the soaps and shampoos (or lack thereof) he was able to use on missions, but there’s always been that core scent that was purely Grant. That hasn’t changed. Breathing it now, she’s taken back to countless nights she’d half-wake to drink in the smell of him and be lulled back to sleep by the pleasant satisfaction that her husband was safe and home and whole.

He’s kidnapped her.

He’s forced her back into a building she fled from only a few short weeks ago. She doesn’t for a moment believe it’s because he believes this is the safest place for them. This is the one place on Earth he can take her where she _can’t_ leave him. If she does so much as turn away from a kiss, it will call her entire cover story into question and quite possibly land her in one of those brainwashing torture chambers all the low level employees are convinced exist somewhere up here.

She should then, absolutely be sitting so close to Grant she can feel his heartbeat, should be gripping his arm and returning every ounce of affection he offers her and then some.

She should _not_ be enjoying it. There shouldn’t be a part of her that is soothed by Grant’s presence at her side, that wants to never let him go and that is, disgustingly, pleased to be backed into this corner.

“No,” Whitehall says, his voice warmer than it’s been all night, “I don’t suppose there is one.”

Jemma can’t _not_ see Whitehall’s expression at that and forces herself to turn her head. Her hold on Grant’s arm tightens as she does and he bends to kiss her hair once she’s settled her temple against his shoulder. Whitehall is smiling at the picture they make and her skin crawls.

Relief sweeps over her when his attention is grabbed by something behind them. He makes a _come forward_ motion to someone, saying, “Your rooms are ready. You’ll both be given assignments come morning and Grant, you’ll have to be given a tour of the base, but for tonight you should both avoid exploring beyond your floor. It will take some time to let everyone know that pesky price on Mrs. Ward’s head has been rescinded.”

Grant’s grip on Jemma tightens as he pulls her to her feet alongside him. “Yes, we wouldn’t want any misunderstandings.” The words themselves sound neutral enough, but his tone is anything but. If Grant spoke to _her_ that way, she would be terrified - she _is_ terrified and she’s only standing in the room - but Whitehall doesn’t even blink.

“Exactly.”

Jemma turns at Grant’s gentle urging and is only out of his arms for a heartbeat before she’s clinging to him tighter than before. The woman waiting patiently to show them the way looks like May. _Exactly_ like May save for the terrible scar marring a large portion of her face.

“Ah, yes,” Whitehall says. “Agent 33 was recently undercover as one of SHIELD’s high-ranking agents when her mask was damaged.”

Jemma’s heart pounds in her chest. It’s likely the scarring leaving Agent 33 looking angry, but Jemma has the disquieting feeling it’s a shadow of May’s own expression when she discovers how easily Jemma’s betrayed them by falling back into her husband’s arms.

“Take the Wards to their apartment,” Whitehall instructs Agent 33.

Grant gives Jemma a gentle squeeze, enough to spur her to release him. Her hands cross as she rounds the couch, so that she can touch her wedding ring without curling her injured hand around her stitches. He’s a traitor and a murderer and a madman, but he’s also her husband. How can it be wrong to love him?

Agent 33 smiles, somehow transforming her face so she looks nothing at all like May. “Happy to comply,” she says and makes to usher them out the door.

Jemma’s blood turns to ice and not even Grant’s arm, slipped easily around her shoulders, can melt it. The real question isn’t how loving him can be wrong, it’s whether or not it truly matters that it is when she doesn’t have a choice.

 


End file.
